The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for producing an alarm signal in mobile equipment, and in particular to such a method and apparatus for producing an alarm signal in consumer electronics devices.
It is known to provide mobile terminals, such as personal digital assistants (PDA""s) with a time scheduling function. By including a calendar and clock in the mobile terminal, together with an alarm facility, a user of the terminal is able to set in advance a date and time for which an alarm should be generated.
While such temporal alarms are useful, a person may need to perform certain tasks that are preferably or even necessarily executed at particular locations. One example of such a task might be when a person is requested by a friend to obtain some information from a local theatre next time they visit it. Assume the person occasionally visits the theatre, although not on a regular basis. Since the person visits the place at irregular times, setting a temporal alarm for such a task is of limited value. Such a temporal alarm can only remind a user that they need to visit the location (theatre) to perform the task. In some instances a user may have recently visited a location where they needed to perform a particular task, but failed to perform the task because they forgot to. They may have even set a temporal alarm to remind them of the task, but if the alarm is generated after the person has departed from the location it is too late to be of benefit.
The paper entitled xe2x80x98Shopper""s Eye: Using locationxe2x80x94based filtering for a shopping agent in the physical worldxe2x80x99, from Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, Minneapolis, Minn., USA 9xe2x80x9413 May 1998 (Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents, pp. 416-421), introduces xe2x80x98Shopper""s Eyexe2x80x99, a PDA-based, Global Positioning System (GPS)xe2x80x94enabled agent prototype that relies on knowledge of a shopper""s physical location to support the shopping task while shopping in a mall. While at home, shoppers create a shopping list of items by selecting items from a pre-existing set of product categories and also indicate the shopping venue that they intend to visit by selecting a venue from a list of shopping malls. Upon arriving at the mall, xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 begins by suggesting the closest store that sells at least one item that is on the shopping list of the user. xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 is an example of xe2x80x98location based filteringxe2x80x99xe2x80x94exploiting the user""s location to constrain the task of an agent.
In order for the xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 to perform satisfactorily, it is necessary to provide a database which includes information about how the particular shopping mall is designed, which shops are present in the mall, where those shops are in the mall and which shops sell which products. Only when all of this information is available can the correct filtering be applied to the agent. Furthermore, information will need to be updated on a regular basis for it to be of use, especially the information relating to products sold by the shops. Clearly, a large amount of information needs to be stored in the database which is more likely to be built up and maintained commercially than by an individual user. Indeed, unless a venue is listed in the database, Shoppers Eye will not be of assistance.
It will therefore be seen that the concept behind xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 will not provide any assistance to the person noted in the theatre scenario above. Firstly, it is unlikely that a small local theatre will be in a relatively localised area such as a shopping mall and so is unlikely to appear on the database for selection. Secondly, the user of xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 is primarily concerned with the main task of shopping and as a result of this, the user engages in a conscious act of preparing xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 prior to embarking on the task of shopping itselfxe2x80x94the person knows that they will be in a particular shopping mall in the immediate future. In contrast, the person visiting the theatre will be looking forward to enjoying a performance and the main objective of the visit is not of gathering the information requested by his friend some weeks before. As a result of this the person will not necessarily engage in a conscious preparation of listing all the things that they need to do at the theatre immediately prior to actually visiting it. There are a limited number of things one wants to do at a theatre and to employ the equivalent of xe2x80x98Shoppers Eyexe2x80x99 for every task for a variety of activities that a user is likely to perform is an unattractive one.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a location alarm apparatus comprising:
alarm setting means allowing a user to specify one or more alarm locations;
storage means for storing data defining the specified alarm locations;
location establishing means for determining the current location of the apparatus; and
output signal generating means for generating an output signal when the condition is met that the current location is substantially the same as a specified alarm location.
Preferably, the location establishing means includes means for processing Global Positioning System information.
Optionally, the alarm setting means allows the user to specify an alarm location which corresponds to the current location as determined by the location establishing means. This feature allows the user of the location alarm, when situated at a particular location, to simply set the apparatus to produce an output signal on the occurrence of a subsequent visit to that particular location. Advantageously, because information describing the physical location is derived from the location establishing means, there is no requirement for the user to input such information. Hence, there is no requirement for the user to have any knowledge of where they are in terms of physical geographic location as may normally be described, for example, with reference to navigational co-ordinates or the like. A further advantage is that because the user can specify the alarm location without making any reference to such a physical geographic co-ordinate system, there is no need for the user to be provided with access to a map or the like, either in the form of a paper map or a map stored electronically.
The location alarm apparatus may further be provided with specified alarm location recording means for maintaining a record of previously specified alarm locations. This allows previously specified alarm locations to be recalled by the user and re-set as specified alarm locations once more. Hence, once an alarm location has been specified and the corresponding information describing the associated physical location is known, the user can re-set a specified alarm location even when they are at a physical location that does not correspond with the physical location of the re-set alarm location.
The location alarm apparatus may allow for the association of supplementary information with the or each specified alarm location. This information may also be used for specifying alarm locations during the alarm setting process.
Where supplementary information is associated with a specified alarm location, on the condition being met that the current location is substantially the same as a specified alarm location, the output signal generating means may generate an output signal of a type dependent on the supplementary information associated with the said specified alarm location.
Where supplementary information is associated with a specified alarm location, on the condition being met that the current location is substantially the same as the specified alarm location, at least part of the supplementary information associated with the said specified alarm location may be reproduced.
Where the alarm setting means allows the user to specify an alarm location in terms of an item of data, this data may include navigational co-ordinates, a place name or mapping symbols donating the presence of physical objects.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of generating a location dependent alarm output signal in a device comprising the steps of:
specifying one or more locations for which an output signal should be generated;
establishing the current location of the device; and
generating the output signal when the current location is substantially the same as a specified location.
Other aspects and optional features of the present invention appear in the appended claims, to which reference should now be made and the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.